


The Kids Are Alright

by darlingargents



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Accidental Sex, Anal Sex, Awkward Sexual Situations, Blow Jobs, Fluff and Angst, Frottage, Internalized Homophobia, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Masturbation, Misunderstandings, Mutual Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Post-IT (2017), Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:35:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24550909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/pseuds/darlingargents
Summary: It’s not the first time Eddie’s shown up at Richie’s window at a bad time, but this might just take the cake.Or: accidental sex, miscommunications, teenage obliviousness, and how to realize you're in love with your best friend.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 37
Kudos: 399
Collections: Fandom 5K 2020





	The Kids Are Alright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).



> Note on timeline: this is set near the end of the 1992 school year, making them about 16. (Hence the underage tag.) Thank you to [falsettodrop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsettodrop/pseuds/falsettodrop) for the beta!

It’s not the first time Eddie’s shown up at Richie’s window at a bad time, but this might just take the cake.

Eddie had just climbed up the tree, leaned in to duck under the open window, when he heard the moan. He’d frozen, heart pounding, unable to stop listening to the low groans, the slick, rhythmic sounds.

All of his logic is telling him to get the fuck away, but he can’t make himself move. He’s balanced on a tree branch outside Richie’s house in the mid-afternoon on a Saturday; anyone could show up on the street below and see him. But his palms are sweating where he’s clinging to the brick wall of Richie’s house. His mouth is dry. And, incredibly, he’s getting  _ hard _ . Just the sounds of movement, of faint gasps, is enough. He’d jerked off today already, in the shower this morning, quick and practiced so he could get out quickly, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

“God, yeah,” Richie mumbles under his breath, and Eddie’s dick twitches like it didn’t get off an hour ago. Maybe less. Yeah, no, he needs to get out right now. He can’t be here. He can’t listen to this.

Instead of climbing down, Eddie shifts up so he can look over the ledge of the window, straight to Richie’s bed.

Richie is naked, on his back, propped up a little on his pillows. His head is thrown back, his glasses off. His toes are curling into the duvet. And there’s his dick: red and wet, his hand pumping up and down it. It’s big, too. Eddie had never actually thought Richie was serious with all those jokes about his massive dick, but as it turns out, it wasn’t an exaggeration at all.

Eddie’s mouth waters. He’s becoming intensely aware of how tight his shorts are, and how they leave nothing to the imagination. He’s certain his boner is becoming more obvious by the second. If Richie were to see him right now, he’d know in a second, just how turned on Eddie got just  _ seeing _ him—

“Fuck,” Richie groans, low in his chest, and reaches down to wrap his fingers around the base of his dick, squeezing. A few drops of liquid squeeze out the head of his dick, sliding down the shaft, and he slides his looped fingers up and down, the wetness guiding his path, adding obscene sounds. Eddie wants to lick it up, wants to get the whole thing in his mouth and—

Where the  _ fuck _ is that thought coming from? Eddie has no idea. He knows he needs to get out of here. He goes to jump back down, and forgets two very important things.

One, he’s wearing his fanny pack.

Two, it can and has gotten caught on  _ literally anything _ .

Eddie leans away and tries to get back on the tree branch to scramble back down. The fanny pack’s strap, where it had been caught on the drain pipe running below the window, stops him, and the force of his motion is thrown the other way. Eddie’s head collides with the window with a violent thud like a bird flew into it, and he yelps in shock and pain, too disoriented to duck down. There’s nothing he can do as he watches, horrified, as Richie visibly jumps, opens his eyes, and sees him.

Richie screams.

Eddie, his head exploding in pain, trying not to fall off the tree branch, screams as well.

Richie jumps off his bed and searches his floor for a pair of basketball shorts, which he pulls on as Eddie detaches his traitor fanny pack and throws it inside Richie’s room before following it. He lands hard on his ass on Richie’s floor, but hardly notices. His head hurts too much.

“Dude, are you okay?” Richie asks. He’s still not wearing his glasses, but Eddie’s sure it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what is probably a massive red soon-to-be-bruise on his forehead. Mommy’s going to have a field day, simultaneously losing her mind with fear for Eddie’s life and getting excited over another trip to the emergency room, like she always does. The thought fills him with dread.

“Fine,” he says, and tries to get up. His vision swims and he thumps back down on the floor. There’s some nausea, too. Ringing in his ears. Concussion? Brain damage? He didn’t break the window, at least. It can’t be  _ too _ bad.

“Shit,” Richie says. He moves away to grab his glasses and comes back, blinking owlishly down at Eddie now that he can actually see him. Eddie notices, suddenly, that Richie is still hard. That his dick is right at Eddie’s eye level. He can’t stop staring, suddenly, at the bulge in Richie’s basketball shorts. He’s seen the shape of Richie’s dick before. Even seen the dick itself, briefly, in locker rooms and during the couple of sleepovers that Mommy let him go to.

But now he’s seen it  _ hard _ , seen it dripping. Seen Richie’s hand pumping over it, heard Richie’s moans.

Eddie’s mouth is watering again.

“Uh, Eddie?” Richie says. “Hello? You okay? Clown got your tongue?” He’s waving a hand in front of Eddie’s face and Eddie hadn’t noticed. Whoops. Maybe he really is concussed.

Richie crouches down to eye level with him, and Eddie remembers, suddenly, that Richie is not the only one in the room who is hard at this moment. He’s not mentally quick enough to stop himself from looking down at his own unflagged erection, obvious through his shorts. He looks back up at Richie, whose look of concern is slowly turning into a look of embarrassment. A flush is spreading across Richie’s face and down his neck, onto his chest. He’s already starting to grow chest hair. Eddie is jealous. He stares at the light dusting of hair over flushed skin, and as he looks, it seems to melt together as everything spins around it.

Oh. Eddie is also experiencing a wave of nausea. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply, willing it down.

The nausea starts to clear along with the ringing in his ears, and Eddie puts the bag aside. Richie is still looking nervously at him, hunched over and curled in on himself, as if waiting for Eddie to jump up and hit him.

“So,” Richie says, “you, uh—”

“I saw your dick, yeah,” Eddie says. Richie winces, and sits back on his heels.

“Sorry,” he says, and Eddie laughs.

“What for? You can jerk off in your room, it’s a free country.” This is where he would normally say something about the risks of blindness or throw in a jab at how dumb it was for him to not close his window, but for some reason, Eddie has no interest in saying anything of the sort.

Richie is going redder and redder by the moment, and he won’t look Eddie in the eye. All Eddie wants to do is touch him, make him feel better — and Eddie remembers, suddenly, with a spike of half-terror and half-something else, that they’re both still hard.

“Look,” he says, well aware that it’s the concussion talking, well aware that he would never normally say this, “you don’t have to stop.”

Richie’s head jerks up and he looks at Eddie, eyes wide behind his glasses. His mouth opens and shuts like he’s been rendered speechless, which Eddie thinks might be a first.

“Look,” Eddie says, and stalls out. He doesn’t even know why he said it in the first place. He can’t justify it to himself, let alone Richie. But — “Look. I just want to see. Maybe you can give me tips.”

It’s the flimsiest excuse he’s ever heard in his life. He’s sure Richie will laugh or call him gay or tell him to fuck off.

Richie does none of those things. He bites his bottom lip, worries at it with his teeth, and looks away, his hands fiddling with the hem of his shorts. Silent. And still hard. Eddie keeps looking at it, the bulge in his shorts. He knows what it looks like now, has seen the shape and girth of it, how it fits in Richie’s hand.

He wants to peel back Richie’s shorts and look and take it in his hand, in his mouth. There’s no point in shutting down the thoughts; he’s painfully hard and it’s all he can think about. Speaking of—

“I could,” he says. “As well, I mean. We can do it together. Just for fun.”  _ It’s not gay. We’re just friends. _ The unspoken words as loud as the spoken ones. He knows it’s not true, and maybe Richie does, too, but if it means he can see Richie like that again, it’s worth anything he has to say, any lies he has to tell.

As if he’s been waiting for permission, Richie’s eyes dart down between Eddie’s legs, where he knows the outline of his dick is visible through his shorts. Even from here, Eddie can see Richie’s pupils blowing out, glassy and aroused. Richie’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows and licks his lips, and Eddie follows the line of his tongue with his eyes.

“Yeah,” Richie says, and closes his eyes, squeezing his hands into fists and letting go. “Yeah, okay.” He stands up, and Eddie stands as well, following him, so hard he thinks he might die and desperate to see Richie’s dick again. (Where did these feelings come from? These all-encompassing thoughts that are so strong he thinks they could kill him? He has no idea.)

Richie climbs back on the bed slowly, like a spooked wild animal creeping away, and slides off his basketball shorts. And there’s his cock again, still hard and red. It curves in toward his belly and Eddie climbs up on the bed, at his feet, angling his head to look at it. Richie bites his lip and looks away as his hand creeps up to gently cup his dick.

“Do it,” Eddie says, with more confidence than he feels. There’s something powerful about this, about being clothed and directing. He’s hard inside his shorts, but feels no desire to get his dick out yet; the feeling of power is too exciting, almost on the same level as the arousal.

Richie nods and fists his hand around his dick, and starts to pump it up and down. His eyes are shut, his head thrown back against the pillow, and his movements are jerky, perfunctory. It looks almost painful, actually — despite the curling toes and gasps, Eddie can tell he’s not putting much effort into it.

Eddie knows he only said he wanted to watch, that he’s going to get off as well, fair’s fair and all that, but — it almost hurts him, seeing Richie do it like this. His best friend deserves to have a good time jerking off. Before he can think it through and stop himself, Eddie leans forward and wraps his hand around Richie’s on his dick.

Richie goes still under his hand. Eddie’s fingers overlap with Richie’s and he can feel Richie’s dick under his fingertips, hot and sticky under his hand, and it sends a jolt straight to his dick. Richie opens his eyes and looks at him, a look that says  _ I thought this was a friend thing, _ and Eddie has to look away, because if he keeps eye contact he might lose his nerve.

“Go slower,” he says, and guides Richie’s hand up and down his dick. Richie lets himself be guided, and when Eddie chances a look back at his face, he’s looking at Eddie, eyes soft behind his glasses. Eddie has to look away again. It almost hurts, and he doesn’t know why.

“Relax your fingers,” Eddie says after a few long, slow strokes. Richie’s hand loosens and Eddie keeps guiding it, up and down, and after a few more strokes, he adds a twist of the palm at the head of Richie’s dick, his thumb brushing against Richie’s slit. For a moment, he almost wishes Richie’s hand were gone, that he could be doing it himself. Controlling Richie’s pleasure, making him feel good. His hips jerk forward a little, involuntarily, and the head of his dick brushes against Richie’s thigh, through too many layers of fabric.

“God,” Richie groans, and throws an arm over his eyes. “Are you trying to make me die of old age or some shit, Eddie, I swear—”

Eddie slows their hands down even more, and Richie’s hips buck up a little, his dick spurting precome. Some of it slides down the back of Eddie’s hand and he has the urge to lick it off. The rest goes under his palm, slicking his path, making it easier to slide his hand maddeningly slowly. Richie lets out a desperate whine in the back of his throat, whistling between his teeth, his hands fisting in the sheets, and Eddie bites down a grin. He reaches down to press a hand on his dick through his shorts, providing welcome pressure for a moment, and then hesitantly moves that hand to Richie’s dick, and lower, cupping Richie’s balls in his hand.

Distantly, he’s aware that this really can’t be called platonic by any reasonable standard. That whatever hesitant boundaries of friendship, of casualness, that they agreed upon are being crossed now. But Richie is whining desperately, responsive to every one of Eddie’s touches, as he continues the slow strokes and runs his fingers down Richie’s balls. He lets go, and moves his finger down, lower, brushing the skin on the insides of Richie’s thighs with light touches.

“Please,” Richie gasps, and Eddie decides that maybe he’ll be nice, this time. He speeds up the rhythm of their hands, adding in a squeeze at the head of Richie’s dick, and rests his other hand on Richie’s thigh, petting him gently. Richie throws his head back and cries out and comes in ropes up his bare chest, some of it splashing on Eddie’s shirt, some of it running down his hand. He lets go of Richie’s dick as it goes soft, and fumbles for one of Richie’s shirts on the floor to wipe his hand clean.

Richie is breathing hard, not moving to clean up the mess of his chest, flushed and wrung-out. He blinks and sits up just a little, looking at Eddie.

“Are you going to…” he asks, and trails off, staring at Eddie’s dick where it’s straining through his shorts.

Eddie hasn’t even noticed just how hard he still is, how painfully turned on, but now that Richie has pointed it out, he can’t think about anything else. He thinks he could come just from a couple of touches. He doesn’t even bother stripping, just stands, kicks off his shorts and underwear, and climbs back on the bed to straddle Richie, knees on either side of his hips. It’s a relief to finally get a hand around himself, and he’s right; it only takes a few strokes before he’s on the edge. His hand is still a bit slick from Richie’s come, and the thought of Richie’s come helping  _ him _ come is dizzying.

Richie is watching him, propped up on his elbows, glasses fogged up. Eddie can’t stop looking at him, the naked lines of his body, the come splattered on his chest, his soft, spent cock nestled in a bed of unruly hair. He wants to touch him, but he thinks it might be too far, if he hadn’t already gone too far at the first touch. ( _ It’s not gay _ , he thinks, it’s just friends,  _ just friend things _ . It rings painfully false. He can’t even convince himself in his own head. But Richie hasn’t pushed him away. Hasn’t made him leave. So it has to be okay.)

He looks at Richie, bare and exposed before him, and remembers the way he sounded, the way he looked when he came, the feeling of his dick under Eddie’s hand, and Eddie gasps and comes, all over Richie below him.

*

They don’t talk about it.

They sit in shocked silence for maybe a minute, and then Richie finds a spare shirt to clean them up, and Eddie gets dressed and experiences a wave of dizziness as a reminder that oh, he probably has a concussion. He knows he’ll have to face the music sooner or later, so he bids goodbye to Richie and leaves. Through the front door this time, since obviously Went and Maggie aren’t home.

He walks his bike home and Mommy screams like a banshee the moment she sees him. The drive to the emergency room is exactly the same as it always is: sobbing, histrionics, prayer, and begging him to stay alive just a few minutes longer. The dramatics had been terrifying as a child, amusing for a brief period of time as a tween, and are now back to being upsetting. They only get more desperate as he ages, like she’s even more afraid of losing him the older he gets.

Mommy pulls out a paper bag to breathe into the moment she sits down in the emergency room, and he rolls his eyes as he waits for the doctor and tries to ignore the stares from the other patients waiting. He’s diagnosed with a mild concussion and told to be careful for the next week or two, and Mommy tells him that she’ll get him out of school, that she’ll keep him in bed and feed him and take care of him, like she always has.

He knows if Mommy had seen this he’d be on his way to the emergency room as she sobbed in the driver’s seat, begging him to stay alive for just a few minutes longer. The dramatics had been terrifying as a child, amusing for a brief period of time as a tween, and are now back to being upsetting. They only get more desperate as he ages, with her breathing into paper bags in the waiting room while his sprained ankle is wrapped or similar melodrama. It’s like she’s even more afraid of losing him the older he gets.

Eddie doesn’t want to miss school and have to catch up, again, the way she keeps making him. Every cough and sniffle gets him bed rest and he’s sick of being behind all the time. But he’s tired and it’s not worth the fight, so he agrees to stay in his room until at least Tuesday and climbs in bed, Mommy promising to bring soup in an hour or so.

When she leaves, he finally, finally has the space to think about what happened.

He doesn’t even know what to call it. It wasn’t sex, not really. He barely even touched Richie, and Richie didn’t touch him at all. It was something, though, and it’s enough to make his heart pound and his palms sweaty just thinking about it. Remembering the feeling of power, of being able to let Richie come when  _ he _ decided, is dizzying. It feels almost addictive. He can imagine doing it every day for the rest of his life and never getting bored. It’s like when he first discovered jerking off. (Unfortunately, he has Richie to thank for that discovery, and Richie will never stop holding it over his head.)

(Of course, now he’s  _ seen _ what Richie was always talking about. It feels different now. It probably will forever.)

It’s information that he has no idea what to do with. It might be a problem for after his nap. Eddie undresses slowly and carefully, notices a spot of come on the bottom of his shirt and takes note to rinse it off before Mommy sees it in the laundry, and climbs into bed. He drifts off within a few minutes, and Mommy has to shake him awake when she finally comes with his soup.

*

Eddie is nothing if not single-mindedly determined when he finds something he wants. What he realizes, as his concussion heals, that he wants to do this again. He wants to touch Richie, to be close to him, to hold something over him that Richie gave without question. He doesn’t really understand it, and turns it over in his head over the next week.

The word  _ homosexual _ floats into his mind at some point, on maybe day three of daytime television and breathing dusty living-room air as Mommy knits next to him and sings under her breath. It’s a terrifying word, more than just  _ gay _ , bringing to mind skeletons and burning sinners, the idea of touching a drop of blood that can kill you. Gay is one thing, a joke — this is serious. This is  _ real _ . It makes his chest close up, his breath start to wheeze, and he has to breathe as quietly as possible to get it under control before Mommy notices and panics.

A part of him, he thinks, has known forever. Maybe all he needed was a push. And to touch Richie’s dick.

The word, the idea — it terrifies him, still. But it might be true.

By the time his concussion has healed and he’s deemed fit to go back to school, he knows what he needs to do.

*

He finds Richie between first and second period, struggling with his locker combination. It finally opens as Eddie gets to his side. “Hi,” Eddie says, and Richie jumps, almost dropping a chemistry textbook on his foot.

“Eds!” he says, clearly delighted. “Concussion all better? I tried to come and visit and bring you chocolate, but Mrs. K didn’t let me in.”

“Really?” It must’ve been when he was sleeping. If he had noticed, he would’ve demanded to see Richie. “Sorry. She does that.”

“I know, man. She’s like that. Don’t worry about it.” Richie manages to stash his chemistry book and get out his PE clothes, and slams and locks his locker. Eddie has PE this period too, so he falls into step beside Richie as he heads for the gym. “You’re all better now, though?”

“Sure.” Eddie glances up at him. Richie is carefully avoiding his eyes. So that’s how they’re going to play it, he realizes. Richie is content to never talk about what happened again.

Eddie, to put it lightly, is not.

“Can I come over after school?” he asks as they get to the boy’s locker room. They still have fifteen minutes or so to change, so it’s not busy yet. Richie stops next to a locker on the outskirts and puts his things into it, and Eddie takes the one next to him.

“Sure,” Richie says. “My parents won’t be home, so we can smoke weed, throw a party, smash the shit out of the place. Whatever you want.”

_ Perfect _ . “Fuck off. That shit can kill you,” Eddie says, because he knows Richie is trying to get a rise out of him. From Richie’s suppressed grin as he pulls off his shirt, Eddie reacted the right way. Their dynamic, their friendship, remains completely in place. It’s all back to normal.

As Richie fumbles for his Phys Ed shirt, Eddie can’t stop looking at his chest, the outlines of his ribs, the skinniness that makes Eddie want to force-feed him. He can’t stop remembering what it looked like when it was splattered in his come.

Eddie feels blood rushing up to his cheeks, and he pulls off his own shirt to cover it. He carefully doesn’t watch as Richie kicks off his shoes and changes from jeans to shorts.

Maybe their friendship isn’t quite as back to normal as he’d like to hope.

He realizes, as he changes into his own gym shorts, that he didn’t finish his thought. “I want to talk,” Eddie says, and Richie, in the middle of cleaning his glasses on his shirt, pauses.

“About what? Me totally kicking your ass at basketball in a few minutes?”

“We’re on the same team, dumbass,” Eddie says. “No, about last week.”

Richie lets his shirttail fall, his half-cleaned glasses still in his hand. He looks at Eddie without really seeing him, looking surprisingly young without his glasses, his longish hair —  _ hippie trash _ , Mommy always said with a surprising viciousness,  _ a sign of weakness and unmanliness _ — falling into his eyes.

“I don’t—” Richie says, and then looks away, clearing his throat. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, good fellow!” he exclaims, trying for British and landing nowhere close. Eddie rolls his eyes. He probably should’ve expected this, because trying to have a serious conversation with Richie is like trying to catch a particularly clever barn cat that doesn’t want to be found. You have to trick him into it, and if that doesn’t work, brute force or bribery is the only option.

Eddie weighs the merits of trying to have this conversation now — at least get Richie to acknowledge that anything happened between them — and decides against it. They have to be out in the gym in a couple minutes, and he can see Richie closing off right in front of his eyes. He’s turned away, his glasses back on, tying the laces of his sneakers with his shoulders hunched in, like he needs to be ready to curl into the fetal position at a moment’s notice.

Eddie leans down to pull on his own sneakers, and as Richie gets up to pass him and go into the gym, he says, “See you after school.”

Richie’s step falters. “See you,” he manages, strangled, and hurries out of the locker room at double speed.

*

By hurrying, Eddie manages to catch Richie right in front of the school, before Richie can get on his bike and speed away. Richie’s only halfway through unlocking his bike from the rack when Eddie taps on his shoulder. He jumps at the touch and looks over his shoulder, and seems to deflate a little when he sees Eddie.

“Your house?” Eddie asks, and it’s not really a question. Richie nods, looking like a man being told to walk to his own execution. Eddie unlocks his own bike, on the next rack over, and follows Richie out of the parking lot and onto the streets.

Usually Richie bikes like he did when he was eleven, twelve, thirteen, standing up on the pedals and just going for it on a bike so shitty it doesn’t even have gears. He does that a little on the way to his house, but is actually pretty subdued for most of the trip, which Eddie can only take as a very bad sign. When they get to his house, Richie doesn’t even jump off or try anything fancy like a wheelie in the last few moments of the ride, which tells Eddie that he’s seriously worried. He just dismounts and leans his bike against the shed, and Eddie does the same before following him inside and up into his room.

It hasn’t changed, since Eddie was here last. Same piles of clothes, same metal band posters, same disorganized homework stacks and unmade bed. Eddie didn’t think he’d ever be a person who got excited looking at a bed, but it only takes a glance at Richie’s bed to remember what Richie looked like naked on top of it. He has to bite the inside of his mouth to keep himself from doing something stupid, like grabbing Richie’s hand or kissing him.

_ AIDS blood, you can get it from anything, a subway pole, your best friend— _

“So whaddaya want to do?” Richie asks, throwing himself into his desk chair and spinning, kicking out his feet. “I got some new comics, or we could play Mario in the basement, or we could get snacks, or—”

“I think,” Eddie says, and is surprised by how steady his voice is, “you should take off your clothes.”

Richie stops spinning in the chair, and looks at Eddie. He opens and closes his mouth as his face goes fiery red. He looks like he wants to complain, or yell, or say anything with that mouth that never stops moving, but he can’t.

Eddie’s eyes fall between his legs, where he can see a noticeable bulge already. Richie looks down too, and then back up at Eddie.

“Okay,” he says, “okay.” He pulls off his shirt, and throws it aside, and stands up to kick off his jeans, pulling off his socks as he does so. He stands in front of Eddie in his underwear, not making eye contact, but obeying anyway.

He did exactly what Eddie told him to do. Without a question or second thought.

Eddie’s heart is pounding so fast he thinks he can taste it. He’s halfway to hard, same as Richie, and his breath is coming fast, wheezing through his lungs, but the hyperventilation doesn’t hurt. It’s thrilling.

“On the bed,” he says, and follows Richie as Richie moves over to the bed. He adjusts the blankets a bit before shrugging and pushing them all off the other side and climbing on. Eddie just looks at him, for a moment, before saying, “Underwear off, too.”

Richie hooks his thumbs in the waistband of his underwear, and pauses, looking at Eddie. “You too,” he says, and Eddie can tell how nervous just those words made him, from the speed of his breathing, the shaking in his hands.

Eddie nods, and strips down quickly as well, making a neat-ish pile of his clothes on the floor. He climbs onto Richie’s bed next to him, naked and exposed, and looks down at Richie’s body again.

This is what he’s been jerking off to in the shower all week. Richie, below him, naked and pliant, willing to do anything he says. He’s thought further, a little, almost entirely sure that in the moment his courage would fail him. But it’s not failing him; if anything, he feels bolder, almost able to do anything.

He straddles Richie, knees on either side of Richie’s hips, and leans over Richie as he inhales in startled surprise. Eddie takes Richie’s wrists in his hands and carefully, carefully, lowers his weight onto them.

It’s an instinct from somewhere deep inside him, an observation based on past behavior. He remembers pinning Richie down and Richie’s pupils blowing out, getting shoved off and thrown a creative insult as the game continued. Somewhere in his mind, the information got filed away, and now he finally understands.

Richie’s mouth opens, a silent gasp as he arches his hips, his cock sliding against Eddie’s. The wet drag of the head of Richie’s dick against the underside of his is an entirely new sensation and it feels so good that Eddie has to close his eyes, because feeling it while looking at Richie’s flushed face and open mouth is too much to handle. He squeezes Richie’s wrists, his nails digging in, and Richie lets out a soft cry, hips jerking again.

Eddie reaches down and wraps a hand around both of their dicks, holding them together, his other hand holding Richie down. Richie writhes below him, panting, and when Eddie looks up at his face his eyes are wide beneath his glasses, and he’s looking at Eddie. The eye contact is almost too much, and Eddie has to look away, back down at their cocks sliding together under his hand. They’re both leaking precome, enough to slick up his hand, and he moves his hips against Richie’s, rutting against him, jerking into his hand.

He looks up and sees Richie’s hand, the one he stopped holding, is still in the same place, as if he’s still holding it. It’s an instant shot of dizzying arousal; Richie following his unspoken commands, without question, without even thinking. Staying in place for him, like he’s tied up. (An image of ropes, holding Richie down, letting Eddie do whatever he wants, hits his brain like a hit of caffeine, and he has to stop moving for a second to stop himself from coming instantly.)

He knows Richie would be good for him, like Richie is being good right now. His thrusts speed up, becoming almost erratic. This is going to be over far too soon, but Richie’s mouth is open, his face flushed, like a goddamn picture underneath him. It’s the best thing he’s ever seen. It’s more than worth it.

“You’re so good,” he says without thinking, “so goddamn good—” and Richie cries out and comes hard, come spurting across his chest and Eddie’s, and the pulsing of his cock against Eddie’s sets him off as well, his vision whiting out as he thrusts his hips against Richie’s. He collapses boneless on Richie’s chest, and they’re both silent for a moment, breathing through the afterglow.

“Eds,” Richie says after a moment, “uh, dude. You’re crushing me.”

Eddie rolls off him and lies beside him on the bed, staring at the ceiling. They’re both sticky and naked, coming down from the peak, and it should be totally disgusting, but Eddie doesn’t care. For once, for maybe the first time, he doesn’t care at all about being dirty. He stares up at the ceiling, the posters decorating it, the spiderweb in the corner.

“So—” Richie says, and Eddie speaks before he can even think the words through.

“I think I’m gay.”

The words hang in the air between them, the moment stretching on and on, and Eddie’s breathing starts to speed up as Richie doesn’t say anything.  _ He hates me, he thinks I’m disgusting, he thinks I’m a freak. _ He didn’t even ask if Richie wanted this. Is that what Mommy meant, when she said the homosexuals infect others? Is he infecting Richie, just by being near him, just by touching him? Is his presence as radioactive as a weapon? Is he—

“Okay, cool,” Richie says, his voice unsteady and pitched just a little too high. Eddie fully stops breathing for a moment. He glances over at Richie. He’s still staring at the ceiling, not looking at Eddie. His hands, at his sides, are loosely curled into fists, shaking.

Eddie doesn’t know how to interpret that, really, but Richie’s spoken acceptance is enough to stop the spiral of his brain into catastrophe and terror. He sits up and looks down at Richie. Richie, who doesn’t care that he might be gay. Who is still his best friend. He’s never been more relieved in his life.

“Thanks,” he manages.

“For what?”

“For being okay.” There’s so much more he wants to say, but the feelings of relief, of gratefulness, are too overwhelming to vocalize it. He pulls his knees into his chest and wraps his arms around them, curling in on himself. It’s warmer and maybe a bit safer.

Richie laughs awkwardly and sits up. “No problem, man.”

He slides off the bed and reaches for a spare shirt to wipe himself clean. He offers it to Eddie, after, and Eddie winces, but takes it from him and wipes himself down anyway. It’s not like he doesn’t know where it’s been. They both get dressed in silence, and when they’re both fully clothed, Eddie puts aside every instinct he has and hugs Richie. It takes Richie a moment, but he slowly wraps his arms around Eddie and hugs him back.

“What was that for?” Richie asks when Eddie pulls away, and Eddie shrugs. He knows he’s probably broken every bro code in the book, but he probably did that the first time he touched Richie’s dick. A hug can’t be worse than that.

“Thanks, man,” he says again.

“Yeah.” Richie runs a hand through his hair, and says, “Wanna play something?”

“Sure.”

It’s fine. They’re fine — but it’s not fully resolved. Eddie knows he has to solve it, to dissipate the faint tension that still remains, but for now, he’s grateful enough for Richie’s acceptance that he’s not going to push it yet.

*

Eddie is coming to a lot of realizations about himself.

It’s as if the lightning bolt realization, finally verbalized, that he’s gay — that he’s gay, and that it didn’t end the world, didn’t destroy his life and everything important to him, this truth that he’s held within him maybe since the first time he looked at Richie and felt something in his stomach that made him never want to look away — has unlocked something inside him. He’s not sure, yet, if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

The day After (he thinks his life might be divided into yet another Before and After. The first Before and After being the clown, of course) he marches into the head coach’s office before class and tells him that he wants to join the track team. He’s just old enough not to need a permission slip, and he’d known that, but been afraid of what Mommy would say. It’s not like he’s not scared now, it’s just… more distant. Less important.

He wants to live his life, and he’s not going to let her stand in the way.

As it turns out, it’s obviously too late in the year to join track — it’s almost June. But the coach puts him down for next year’s tryouts and tells him to work at it over the summer. Eddie nods, and already starts planning his routes, pre-dawn, his bike left behind, hiding the evidence. Getting stronger. Breathing with his completely functional lungs.

The rest of the school day goes by in a blur. He doesn’t see Richie until lunch, and when he does, he gets another Realization. Richie is eating with Bev and Stan, eating a sandwich with one hand while he waves the other around and nearly takes Bev’s head off, spraying crumbs across the table as he laughs. Bev shoves him away with an exaggerated disgusted noise before breaking down into giggles as well.

As he stands still in the doorway, classmates shoving past him with noises of irritation, a thought comes into his head.  _ I want to date him. _

It’s a thought that doesn’t seem to make much sense, at first. He can’t — he can’t  _ date _ Richie. Sex is one thing. It makes sense: he’s gay, he wants to have sex with other boys. But dating has always seemed like it’s for other people. Doubly so now that Eddie is consciously aware of what makes him  _ different _ from those other people.

But he wants — he wants it. He wants to hold hands in the movies and ride shotgun in Richie’s shitty car and kiss him. They haven’t even kissed. He’s held Richie’s dick against his, has felt it come. But he’s never kissed Richie.

That, it seems, needs to be remedied.

Someone shoves into his shoulder, hard. “Move, asshole,” they say, and Eddie moves, fumbling for his lunch as he makes a beeline for Richie’s table. Richie grins at him when he sees him approaching, and takes his jacket off the seat next to him, gesturing for Eddie to sit down. Richie usually saves him a seat, but this time it sets off a warm feeling in his stomach, a smile tugging at his lips without his consent. Eddie unwraps his sandwich as Richie resumes whatever story he was telling, and lets the words wash over him as Stan dryly interjects and Bev laughs and calls him an idiot.

It’s perfect. It would be so much better if Richie could reach under the table and hold his hand for a split second, just a couple times.

The rest of the Losers trickle in, and it’s a normal lunchtime with them, Richie making paper airplanes and Bev sketching in her notepad and Bill and Stan getting into an avid discussion about the last dumb horror novel they read. And Eddie and Richie, as usual, getting into a totally pointless debate, this time about where you should sit in movie theatres.

“Front,” Richie insists, for the fifth time, leaning back in his chair. Eddie resists the urge to tell him to get all four chair legs on the ground.

“You’re such a fucking dumbass. You can’t even see the entire fucking screen from there.”

“They wouldn’t put the seats there if you couldn’t see it! Or they would make you pay less for them.”

“They’re for suckers who can’t get there earlier, you dumbass.” Eddie forces himself not to smile fondly. If he did, Richie would absolutely claim victory, and when he’s this objectively correct, Eddie can’t allow that. “If you’re in the back, you get the best view.”

“Front, you can run to piss easier.”

“You do that before it starts so you don’t miss anything.” The fond smile is absolutely coming out. Eddie really needs to get it under control.

Richie, clearly sensing weakness, drops his front chair legs onto the floor and leans on his forearms, taking the tone of a lecturer. “And then you drink a gallon of soda because you’re in a movie, and then you have to get up to piss—”

“Do you only like the front because you’re blind as a fucking bat? You should get some new glasses. Maybe you’d be able to see some fucking sense.”

“Wow, Eds, incredible. How long did it take you to think of that?”

Eddie doesn’t dignify that with a response. (He thought of it while he was bored in English class a few days ago. He’s been waiting for a chance to use it.) “Do you want to see Alien 3 again?”

Richie gives him a Look. “I went with Bill on opening night.”

“I know.” Eddie leans in and gives Richie a Look right back. He’s not sure it conveys exactly what he wants it to convey, but he gives it his best shot. “Just you and me.” The unspoken:  _ a date. Just us. No one will see. _

It takes a moment, but Richie seems to realize what he’s saying. His eyes widen under his glasses and Eddie leans in, keeping eye contact.

“I think,” he says in a low voice, “we should sit in the back.”

Richie swallows. “Yeah,” he says, faintly. “Good idea.”

Eddie leans back and grins, turning around to look at the rest of the Losers, caught up in their own conversations. “Hey, Bev, what are you drawing?” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Richie adjusting his shirttail over his pants, looking down at the table, bright red. Bev lifts her notebook to show him, and he looks at what she points out. He can’t stop smiling.

*

The quietest showings, the employee tells Eddie, are weekday mornings. As it so happens, the next Monday, Eddie has a pass to skip for a doctor’s appointment at 9am. Richie agrees to meet him at 11:15 outside the Aladdin for the 11:30 showing of  _ Alien 3 _ . After the appointment, Eddie claims a headache, goes to his room for a “nap”, and climbs out the window with cash in his fannypack and the taste of a few swigs of mouthwash still lingering on his tongue.

He gets there first, and has to wait five minutes or so for Richie to show up. He can’t stop moving, bouncing on the balls of his feet, trying not to look in the eyes of the adults who pass him. When Richie finally shows up, Eddie is practically about to burst with frantic energy.

“Hey, hey,” he says, and grins. “I’ll pay, my treat. Did you go to your morning classes or sleep in?”

“Wish I’d slept in,” Richie says, punctuating the sentiment with a yawn. “But no. Just left.”

“Cool.” Eddie has never been this nervous to be around Richie his entire life. They’ve been normal since setting the date, even hung out with the rest of the Losers on Mike’s farm over the weekend. But this is different. The air between them feels like it’s crackling with potential. “Let’s go in.”

Eddie buys the tickets from a bored-looking young adult who looks like she’s about to ask why they’re not in school, before deciding she doesn’t care. He lets Richie buy the food, two Cokes and a large popcorn to share, and they’re in the theatre with ten minutes to spare. The trailers are playing, and there are maybe two other people in the whole place, both near the front.

Eddie heads straight for the back. Richie follows.

They sit in the second to last row, slightly off-centre so that the projector won’t illuminate them too much. Eddie gets himself comfortable, and as the ads move on and one or two other people trickle in (none sitting nearby) he allows his hand to drift to the inside of Richie’s thigh.

Richie is wearing jeans, so it’s not bare skin, but he still jumps at the touch. “What—” he says, and falls silent as Eddie’s fingers creep up. He palms the fabric over Richie’s dick and feels it start to move and thicken under his hand. Richie’s breathing is shallow and quick as Eddie rubs his hand slowly up and down, letting Richie harden against his touch.

He keeps going for thirty seconds or so, and withdraws his hand. “Watch the trailers,” he whispers, and helps himself to the popcorn. Richie reaches mechanically for the popcorn bucket when Eddie holds it out to him, and adjusts in his seat.

The trailers feel excruciatingly long. Eddie’s not hard yet, but knowing that Richie is makes his mouth go dry in the best possible way. He eats popcorn and thinks about the feeling of Richie’s cock under his hand, and takes a sip of his coke.

When the lights dim, he carefully puts the popcorn on the ground, and reaches up for Richie’s face. He takes Richie’s chin in his fingers and turns his head towards him. In the darkness, he can only see the faintest of light reflected off of Richie’s glasses.

Eddie kisses him.

Richie gasps into his mouth as their lips touch, going still as Eddie puts a hand on his shoulder. His mouth tastes like popcorn and coke, just like Eddie’s, as Eddie licks into it, feeling Richie’s teeth under his tongue. His mouth opens under Eddies and he lets out a faint whine as Eddie’s thumb presses into his neck, feeling his fluttering pulse against it. His heart is speeding up, and Eddie thinks his heart is, too.

This is his first kiss. In the back of a movie theatre, popcorn kernels stuck in his teeth, Richie’s breath hot against his tongue, his lips warm and his glasses nudging Eddie’s face. He moves his hands again, taking Richie’s face in them, and Richie pushes closer, seemingly bolder, pressing a hand into Eddie’s chest. Eddie lets him.

The sounds of the opening credits shock them apart. Eddie falls back in his chair, breathing hard, hands shaking. His lips are tingling. His mouth feels unclean in the best way it ever has.

He kissed Richie Tozier. He kissed Richie. It shouldn’t be much at this point, shouldn’t matter, but somehow it does; somehow it feels so important, so vital, that he’s not sure how he ever lived without it. He wants to kiss Richie every day for the rest of his life.

The movie starts. Eddie thinks this date might kill him.

*

The first time the movie’s volume gets to a certain level, Eddie reaches over to undo Richie’s jeans. Lights flash across his hands and he sees Richie look down, his glasses reflecting the movie.

He feels Richie trembling a bit under his hands as he pops the button and pulls the zipper down. That strange confidence is back as he slides his hand into Richie’s underwear and pulls out his cock. It was half-hard already and it fully wakes up in his hand as he pumps it up and down, a little too dry. Anyone could see if they just looked over at the right time. The thought sends a thrill down to his gut.

When Richie is hard in his hand, leaking just a bit from the tip, Eddie gets a brilliant idea. He lets go of Richie’s dick, nudges the popcorn on the floor between them out of the way, and gets down on his knees and shuffles in front of Richie, between his legs. Richie looks down at him, his mouth opening.

“What—”

“Watch the movie,” Eddie says, and takes the head of Richie’s dick into his mouth.

He has no idea where the idea came from, but the moment he tastes Richie on his tongue, he knows it’s the best idea he’s ever had. He’s fully hard in his jeans, the faintly bitter taste of Richie’s precome on his tongue, the warm fleshiness of the head of his dick filling his mouth. He moves his head forward, taking it deeper, until it bumps the back of his throat and he has to pull back, trying not to cough. When he recovers, he takes it again. And again. Richie’s dick slides in and out of his mouth, his hand pumping up and down the part of the shaft he can’t fit inside, and Richie is starting to make  _ noises _ that might be enough to drive him wild.

He pulls back and off Richie’s dick with a faint popping noise. Richie’s hands are on his thighs, nails digging into his jeans, and Eddie whispers, “You can grab my hair if you want.” Richie looks down and nods, and moves one hand to bury it in Eddie’s hair.

Eddie looks back down at Richie’s cock, slick with his spit, the tip dripping, and sucks the head back into his mouth. He doesn’t go deep this time, just sucks on the head, poking his tongue at the slit experimentally. Richie’s hand tightens in his hair and his hips jerk forward, just a bit, pushing his cock deeper into Eddie’s mouth. Eddie reaches up to press a hand flat against Richie’s knee, holding him back gently, and sucks harder on the tip, swirling his tongue around it like a lollipop.

The edges of Eddie’s mouth feel stretched out, and he can feel drool running down his chin. It’s disgusting, and he doesn’t care. All he cares about is getting Richie to come in his mouth. He pulls off for a moment, wipes off his face, and takes Richie back as deep as he can, all at once. He forces past his gag reflex, going deeper, his throat contracting around Richie’s dick, and Richie’s nails scrape against his scalp as Richie groans low and deep.

Eddie pulls off, sucks on the head, goes down again. He repeats the process only a couple more times before Richie tugs on his hair and gasps, “Eddie, I’m going to—”

He sucks harder, squeezes the shaft, pets Richie’s thigh with his other hand. Telling him it’s okay. Richie moans and his cock pulses in Eddie’s mouth, filling it up. He swallows it down best he can, but not all of it makes it down his throat; Eddie pulls off Richie’s cock, coughing, a bit of come running down his chin. Eddie sits back on his heels and notices suddenly how much his knees hurt. He hadn’t even noticed them start to ache on the concrete floor.

He wipes off his face and looks up at Richie, who looks utterly dazed as he tucks himself back into his jeans. Eddie realizes, with a sudden, fierce need, how hard he is. He gets back into his seat and undoes his jeans, his fingers fumbling the button. He’s about to jerk off himself, too desperate to do anything else, when Richie reaches over and grabs his cock.

Richie is clearly not great at this, at an awkward angle, still out of it from orgasm, but his hand around Eddie’s dick is still a welcome relief. He sighs and leans back in the seat as Richie starts to slide his hand up and down. It’s too dry, which is immediately obvious, and Richie takes his hand away and licks it before returning it to Eddie’s cock, hot and slick. Eddie’s already on the edge and it doesn’t take much to get him close, and then he realizes — they’re still in the theatre, it’s going to go everywhere—

“Richie,” he says, almost frantic, “I’m going to—”

Richie looks at him, and then without warning he ducks his head down and sucks the head of Eddie’s dick into his mouth.

The sudden shocking feeling combined with Richie’s hand is enough to send Eddie over the edge and he comes with a cry muffled into his own hand, stopping his hips from thrusting up into Richie’s face as his vision swims and pleasure runs through his entire body. Richie swallows down his come and pulls off with an obscene popping sound.

They sit in silence for a long moment, just breathing as the movie continues to play. After a long moment, Richie reaches for his drink, and the slurping sound is enough to shake Eddie out of his post-orgasm haze and tuck himself back into his jeans. He takes a sip of his own Coke and notices how sore his jaw is, rubbing it with one hand. It’s a good sore. It makes him feel like he did something good.

“Thanks, man,” Richie says quietly, and Eddie grins. He picks up the popcorn bucket and offers it to Richie, who takes a handful. He takes his own and crunches it as the movie continues.

It’s a good first date.

*

Things seem to settle into a routine after that.

It’s a bit weird, at first. Eddie’s never dated anyone before, and he probably isn't doing it right. But they’re both new. They’re both figuring it out.

What happens is: not much changes.

They still hang out with the Losers and sit together, like they always have, annoying the shit out of everyone around them by having their version of fun. Richie still talks about how he was balls deep in Eddie’s mother last night and Eddie still calls him a little shit and tackles him. Except now, when they calm down a bit, Eddie reaches for Richie’s hand under the table if he thinks he can get away with it, and holds on tight. Richie never reaches for him, but he never pulls away, either, and Eddie thinks that’s good enough for now.

They still spend their school breaks out on the bleachers sometimes, with Bev, her and Richie smoking and Eddie pointing out the health risks, except now they sit a little closer. Sometimes Eddie hooks his ankle around Richie’s, where their feet are hidden by the next bleacher down, and brushes his fingers across the skin under Richie’s shirt, just over his belt. He’s sure Bev notices, but he’s not worried about it, really. He’s sure all the Losers know in some capacity. It doesn’t matter; they still all love each other, no matter what.

After school, they hang out at Richie’s house, playing video games or reading comics, except now they take breaks to make out on the couch in Richie’s basement. Eddie pulls Richie down on top of him and grabs his ass while they slowly kiss, Richie’s lips moving down to suck on Eddie’s neck, never hard enough to leave hickeys. They grind lazily against each other until one of them — usually Eddie — gets too horny and pulls both their dicks out, and they jerk each other off or watch each other or sometimes use their mouths. Or Eddie climbs on Richie’s lap and they kiss like that, more frantic, almost more desperate, Richie’s teeth on Eddie’s neck, Eddie whining as he thrusts his hips against Richie’s. A couple of times they’ve both come in their pants like that, too turned on and frantic to stop, rutting against each other until Richie had groaned and pressed his face into Eddie’s shoulder. The feeling of wetness, of Richie’s stuttering hips against his, had pushed Eddie over the edge, coming hard and painful in his underwear.

That had been fun to clean up.

Things are different, now, is the point, but really still the same. And Eddie loves it. He never wants it to end. It’s almost perfect.

Except, well. Richie still won’t really talk about it. There’s something off about Richie and Eddie can’t put his finger on it, except that Richie doesn’t really seem happy. Which seems wrong. Eddie is happier than he’s ever been and Richie is along for the ride. But after they fuck, Richie always gets a look in his eyes like he’s seeing something painful that isn’t there. When they’re hanging out normally, Richie never touches him, but never leans away when Eddie touches first. It’s small things that add up to a picture that Eddie doesn’t understand or like.

Relationships, he’s heard, are about communication. That’s probably what they need. But a little bargaining never hurts, so he swipes up a  _ communications helper _ from the pharmacy the first weekend after the school year ends, on his way to Richie’s house.

He knows Went and Maggie are both at work, so he comes in the front door, yelling Richie’s name. Richie shouts something back from the general direction of his room, so Eddie heads there, almost taking the stairs two at a time. He’s not excited for this conversation, exactly, but he is excited about the other part of this particular day.

Richie is still in bed when he opens the door, though he’s wearing a shirt and looks like he’s gotten up long enough to shower, at least. He yawns and reaches for his glasses as Eddie flops down at the end of his bed and pulls Richie in for a short kiss. When he pulls away, Richie is frowning.

Yeah. They really need to talk.

“I think we need to talk,” Richie says. Well, at least they’re on the same page about that. “I haven’t… I need to tell you something.”

Eddie tries to keep his expression neutral. There’s something Richie hasn’t told him. It makes sense. It’s never a fun thing to hear, but hopefully it won’t be anything bad.

“Okay,” Eddie says, and drops his pharmacy bag on the floor before adjusting himself to sit cross-legged on the bed. Richie kicks off his blankets and sits on top of them, and Eddie can see his Batman boxers in their full, worn-down-to-threads glory. “Go ahead.”

Richie takes a deep breath and looks down. “Eds, I’m…”

Eddie waits.

Richie starts crying.

It takes Eddie a second to realize. Richie is a quiet crier. But his shoulders start to shake, his breaths start to wheeze, and Eddie sees a tear drip off the end of his nose. “Oh, god,” Eddie says, and climbs awkwardly around Richie to grab for the box of tissues on his bedside table. “Richie—”

Richie takes a tissue and pulls off his glasses, rubbing his eyes hard. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and drops his glasses on the bed as he presses the tissue into his eyes for a few more breaths. Then he crumples it up, tosses it on the floor, and looks Eddie right in the eyes.

“I’m gay.”

For a long moment, all Eddie can do is stare at him with his mouth open. He can’t even quite comprehend that he just heard those words. He fumbles for something to say, and starts out with, “I’m sorry, you’re—”

“I’m gay. I’m a fucking — a goddamn — a queer, a fa—”

“Richie,” Eddie says, probably a bit too loudly, grabbing Richie’s flailing hands and holding them down. His nails digging into Richie’s wrists are always enough to calm him down, at least for a moment. “I just. You think I didn’t  _ know _ that?”

Richie takes another shuddering breath, looking like he’s struggling not to cry more. Without his glasses, he looks younger, almost babyish. His eyes are red and still tearing up. “I just. I don’t know. I thought I was lying, or taking advantage of you, or—”

“I think I realized you were gay the first time I  _ came all over you— _ ”

“You deserve better!”

Eddie goes quiet. Richie won’t look at him. He lets go of Richie’s wrists, and sees the red marks where his nails dug in. “What are you  _ talking _ about?” he manages after maybe thirty seconds of wondering how the hell to respond to that. “You’re my boyfriend. Why would I want anyone else?”

Richie’s head jerks up. “ _ Boyfriend _ ?”

“Um, yes?” Eddie can’t quite reconcile the look of shock on Richie’s face. “What else would you call this?”

“Oh my god.” Richie presses his hands over his eyes. “We’re — we’re  _ dating _ ?”

“Yes?”

Richie moves his hands down, pressing them over his mouth. “Oh my god,” he says through his hands, the words muffled. “Jesus christ. I’m such a fucking idiot.”

“Did you… what did you think was happening, dumbass?”

“You’re going to laugh at me.”

“Fucking obviously! You’re an idiot!” Richie actually laughs at that, and it’s a relief to hear after seeing him cry. Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever seen him cry when he hasn’t been hurt, and it had scared him a lot more than he’d be willing to admit.

Richie takes another deep breath and looks away while he talks. “I thought — I don’t know. You figured out you were gay, but I’ve known… forever, I don’t know. And I was in love with  _ you _ .” He rushes through the last bit, as if Eddie might miss it if he goes fast, but Eddie hears it. Eddie finds himself smiling, and he can’t stop. “And I was there and I was okay with it, so you just… wanted to have sex with me. So I did it, and it hurt so fucking much, because I was in love with you and you weren’t in love with me.”

“Oh.” Eddie feels his words like a knife. It’s not true, none of it is true, but he can imagine how true it must’ve  _ felt _ . “I… I asked you on a date!”

“The movies? I thought we were just hanging out. Or just having sex in a movie theatre.”

“It was a  _ date _ ! Oh my god.” Eddie finds himself laughing. “You didn’t realize it was a date?”

Richie’s face is flaming red. “Well, I guess looking back on it—”

“I’m gonna hold this against you forever, I hope you know that.”

“Shut up.”

“We’ve had so many dates. We make out all the time. How did you not—”

“I don’t know,” Richie says, and looks away again. “I thought it was… I don’t know, just fooling around. I was there, you had just realized you were gay. Not a love story.”

Eddie’s chest does something very interesting at the word  _ love _ . It’s not what Richie is saying, but still— “I guess we should’ve talked more.”

“Can we stop talking now? You came to have sex, right?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I would be changing my plans to cuddle all day, but unfortunately I have actual plans today.” He reaches down for the pharmacy bag and pulls out the bottle of lube. “You mentioned wanting to get fucked, right?”

Richie’s eyes light up. “Aww, you remembered?”

“Fuck off.” Eddie is grinning like a maniac. “Do you want it or not?”

“I thought you would never ask, baby.”

“Seriously, I will  _ leave— _ ”

Richie laughs so hard that he snorts, and Eddie ends up laughing, too. It’s the emptiest threat he’s ever made, and they both know it.

*

It takes what feels like forever to find a comfortable position, with plenty of bickering involved. Eventually Eddie grabs two pillows and gets Richie on his back, the pillows under his ass, Eddie kneeling between them. Richie pulls off his boxers and shirt and Eddie spends probably too long looking at him, at the late-morning sunlight playing across his chest, at the ribs he can count when Richie breathes out. He keeps looking until Richie kicks him and tells him to get on with it.

He squirts the lube onto the fingers of his right hand and rubs them together, warming up the cold gel, before reaching forward. Richie’s holding his breath, he can tell, and he jumps when Eddie touches his hole. The lube squelches between his fingers as he works his index finger inside.

“Relax,” he says, and rests his other hand on Richie’s knee as he crooks his finger and slides it back out. The slick sounds are obscene. Eddie is already getting hard at the feeling of Richie clenching around his finger, at Richie’s rapid, frantic breathing, at the sense of anticipation. As he feels Richie relax a little around his finger, he sees that Richie is getting hard, too.

He slides his finger almost all the way out, and adds his middle finger. Richie gasps as he pushes them both in at once, sliding them even deeper than before. He presses down and feels something under his fingers, and Richie lets out a desperate whine, throwing his arm over his eyes. Eddie grins, and presses in again, rubbing back and forth over the spot.

“Fuck,” Richie groans, and his hips jerk up off the pillows, his cock hardening even more, the tip leaking. Eddie wants to lick it, so he does, leans forward and sucks the head into his mouth as he rubs his fingers back and forth over that spot inside Richie. Richie cries out, his hands fisting in his sheets and his hips jerking, riding Eddie’s fingers. “Fuck, Eds, stop—”

Eddie stops moving his fingers and pulls off Richie’s cock with a pop. “Sorry, sorry” he says. “What’s up?”

Richie is breathing hard, red-faced, eyes glassy. “I was going to come,” he says, “if you’d kept going for thirty more seconds.”

“Just from that? Really?” Eddie slides his fingers forward again, pressing experimentally, and Richie gasps, his bitten lips opening wide.

“God — yes. That and your mouth. I want you to fuck me, please—”

Eddie’s cock twitches at that. “Okay,” he says, and pulls back, scissoring his fingers a bit instead of continuing to torture that one spot.

He stretches Richie open for a couple minutes longer, letting Richie’s breathing calm down, until Richie says, “I’m ready.”

Eddie nods, and pulls out his fingers. Richie’s hips jolt forward for a moment as if chasing the fullness, and Eddie grabs for the lube bottle so quickly his already-slick fingers fumble and drop it on the bedspread.

“Hurry the fuck up,” Richie says, and Eddie flips him off with one hand as he opens the bottle and dumps more lube on his hand. He covers his cock in it — probably too much, as some of it slides down his balls and drips off the tip of his dick, but it’s probably better to have too much than not enough — and drops the bottle again.

He wipes his dirty hand on Richie’s discarded shirt, ignores Richie’s indignant “ _ Really, dude _ ?” and lines himself up, the head of his cock against Richie’s hole, his hands on Richie’s thighs.

“Okay?” he asks, suddenly nervous for the first time in this process. He’s often able to let go of his anxiety during sex with Richie, and it’s a pretty nice break, but this feels bigger. Like a monumental step. They can’t go back after this, even if they wanted to.

“Yeah,” Richie says, and reaches to grab Eddie’s hand where it rests on his thigh. His eyes are shiny, like he’s almost crying; Eddie is not going to comment on that, because if he thinks about it too hard, he gets a tight feeling in his chest that might be dangerous. “Yeah, please.”

“Okay,” Eddie says, and pushes in, painfully slowly.

It’s almost instantly overwhelming. His first instinct is to shove himself in as hard as he can, but he forces himself to go slow, watching himself be swallowed by Richie, inch by inch. Richie is breathing shallowly and rapidly, eyes on the ceiling, a single tear running down his temple. His hand tightens on Eddie’s, nails digging in.

Usually, when they have sex, it’s frantic. They’re both desperate to get off, as quickly and as hard as possible. This slowness, the fact that they're holding hands — it’s overwhelming in a way that fast and dirty sex has never been. And it doesn’t hurt that Eddie is still giddy, on some level, from the L-word, and the fact that they’re finally on the same page. That the part of Richie that was holding back out of fear is finally gone.

It’s close and tender and maybe the best thing Eddie’s ever felt.

When he finally bottoms out, he stays there for a long moment, just breathing. Richie’s fingers, tight around his, squeeze and release as Richie adjusts. “Good?” he manages when he feels stable enough to speak. Richie nods and closes his eyes, another tear squeezing out.

“You should move,” Richie says a few breaths later. “Slow.” Eddie nods, and starts to pull back, inch by painfully slow inch. Halfway out, he pushes back in. It’s still dizzyingly tight, but the amount of lube he used seems like it was a good idea; it makes the movement as painless as it can be.

He keeps going slowly, in and out, and it gets easier the more he does. He can practically feel Richie relaxing around him, even as his hand stays tight in Eddie’s. At some point, Richie opens his eyes, and moves his legs, wrapping them around Eddie’s back like a koala.

“Go faster,” Richie says, breathing hard, and Eddie obliges, leaning over Richie and resting the hand not holding Richie’s on the bed. The new angle makes Richie gasp and wrap his legs tighter, his heel digging into Eddie’s back. He reaches up and buries his other hand in Eddie’s hair, his eyes rolling back in his head as Eddie fucks him.

It’s harder work than Eddie expected, his thighs trembling with effort as he keeps going as fast and hard as he can, but the sounds Richie is making, the flush of his chest, the feeling of his nails dragging against Eddie’s scalp, is more than worth it. He pushes past the burn in his thighs and keeps going.

“Please,” Richie gasps out, “fuck, Eddie, please—”

“I love you,” he blurts out, and Richie whines, desperate, clenching around Eddie inside him. Saying the words out loud is dizzying, even amongst all the other things he’s feeling right now. It’s the most important thing he’s ever said or ever felt.

Eddie lets go of Richie’s hand and wraps it around Richie’s dick. The tip is leaking enough to slick his hand up without needing to grab the lube or lick it, and he starts jerking Richie off in time with his thrusts. Richie grabs his shoulders with both hands, nails digging in, and gasps, “Eddie, god, I love you—” and Eddie buries himself to the hilt and comes so hard he almost blacks out. He feels Richie coming too, half a breath later, and contractions around his dick are enough to almost set him off again before he’s even done the first orgasm.

For a long moment, Eddie doesn’t move, and then all the energy leaves his body at once and he collapses on top of Richie, still inside him. His come is oozing out around his cock as he goes soft, he can feel Richie’s come under him where he’s lying on his chest, they’re both sticky with sweat and lube and who the fuck knows what else, and he feels better than he ever has before.

Eventually Richie pats his shoulder and mutters, “You’re fucking crushing me, dude,” and Eddie rolls off him, onto his back, by Richie’s side. He hears a car door slam outside and his heartrate kicks up for a moment before Richie mumbles, “It’s the neighbours.”

Eddie reaches down and laces his fingers with Richie’s, and holds on. “We still need to talk, you know,” he says, and Richie groans, rolling on his side, away from Eddie. He doesn’t let go of Eddie’s hand, though.

“I need to eat a fucking pizza first, Jesus Christ,” Richie says. “I’m exhausted. You fuck like a goddamn champion. Where did you learn to do that? You blew my mind. Best cherry popping I can imagine.”

“Ew,” Eddie says, and then, “You were pretty good, I guess.”

“Wow, okay, and after I was that nice to you—”

“You’re such a bitch—”

Richie grabs the pillow under his ass and weakly flings it at Eddie’s head, missing by a mile. It lands on the floor and Eddie laughs so hard he nearly falls off the bed.

He doesn’t let go of Richie’s hand.


End file.
